this space

this space

whenceforth

           …   

Cloth

 I cannot hold up anything but this —-

Questions

Is this how it will be now? 

Struggle

 I struggle with this …

Cruelty

At what point did you realise

Disembodied

There is something nearly disembodying

It’s after 4 am

and what’s keeping me awake is…

Anyone else got any shit to fling in my direction?

Honestly, this is so overwhelming. It is coming at me from all sides. Where is the help I need? Or is this just *another* life situation that I'm required to struggle through on my own?

La pendue

 I guess this means I’ll be going nowhere, fast.

#again

Reflection upon some really awful events in recent years

There is a sizeable commentary that I could invoke, here, in writing, ... 

When I am a landlord

When I am a landlord, I carry out my responsibilities properly. 

On (dis)trust

It can hardly be wondered now

Is this the way of it?

Is this how it goes? Every time? Always the wound but never a salve for it? Even the calmest among you must know this is wrong, it is deeply wrong, it is as offensive as it is obvious. An even in that there is no skill or honour. There is only a lie, laid deep, that continues to cost me ever more and more. And where are you, person who laid down trust as the sacred agreement between us? Where are you now, as this latest blow lands upon my most vulnerable organs? I have seen how you thrive even in the midst of this sustained assault against me and mine. I have seen your smiling confidence broadcast like a false promise of a reprieve that never comes. Your line of sight is worth nothing to me while it continues to witness these acts commissioned against me in full view of the helpless law. Your smug, secret knowledge multiplies the price I pay while you stand passively by, allowing the unthinkable to happen, again. There is no honour among thieves, and you, it seems, are proud to rob me once again. 

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

How could you?

Lost

There is something in all of this...

--- flayed

 This is --- 

strung

 

        surely you must know

        how tight my patience has been

        strung? yet still you pull

I can't help you

Look, I can't do much to help you if you have followed me into this place, 

CONCLUSION

It has only taken me 50 years or so, but I think I might finally be on the verge of arriving at a conclusion.

poetry

 your ridiculous

fuckery gives me pause to 

vow never again

Perhaps

 

Perhaps you haven’t put enough effort into understanding how angry I am, and how angry I am at you, and why I am so angry. 

Awake

I cannot begin to tell you how difficult this is for me. How hard it is and how hard it has been for this entire wretched, aching time. I am not sleeping. I am awash with loss. This loss and a thousand losses, each a reminder of all of the others. People I’ve lost, homes and families and all manner of precious memories. I am bobbing about, disregarded in the face of this tidal swell of anguish, and there is no land in sight. 

without / within

It's a moment of light, a pause in dilute
                                                     suspended
                                                     warmth, within this captive
                                                                                      ravening
                                                                                      gloom. 

It's a glimpse of tendril, a flush of slight
                                                       fragile
                                                       movement, within this encircling
                                                                                            rictus of
                                                                                            decay.

It's the merest of nothings, a hint of unfolding
                                                          frozen 
                                                          breath, within this calcified 
                                                                                        ruinous 
                                                                                        hole.

In the darkness, I can only see anger

 

I

am

too

angry

to

sleep.

You are literally killing me. 

Please send help.

 

I can’t do this anymore. 

I just can’t. 

It’s too much brutalisation for, well, apparently no reward. 

unused / unkept

 

this slick entropy

of unused things is / become

a cobbled pathway

vigil / vigilant

 

this restless sliver

of night is a blade I hold

even as it cuts

distanced / silenced

 

    I dreamed about you, again. 

    I asked you how long it has been since I've seen you, and you laughed. 

    So I asked, how long has it been since we've spoken to each other?

    How long has it been since we've had a meaningful conversation? 

    You didn't answer. 

gloom / glow

 

this unsightly wreck

of greying days is / become

my only landscape 

I’m tired

 

I’m tired 

of this thankless, financially-draining, pointless slog. 

gallery

 

this ugly chamber

rings loud with the footsteps of

your artful cut

spent / unspent

 

these words rain, falling

through my cold fingers like so

many spent bullets

I require you to know this

At some point, I am going to need to reconcile the enormous lie that you have enacted upon me. Unless or until that happens, my sense of betrayal remains absolute. My feelings of loss and my anger at your reckless disregard of me, of my needs, of my fundamental rights, are a constant corrosive force in my life. This is what you have done, with your skillful, self-serving expediency, and I require you to know this. It must be very clear by now that I hold a set of expectations that have been engineered in service of your enormous lie, and your failure to deliver against core aspects of those expectations produces a constant, bitter fuel for my grievance. I want you to understand that this is a source of deep suffering to me, and also that it shapes my experience, but it does not define it. There are many types of pain, and this is pain that I live with, moment upon moment, day upon day, and it will not be eased until that which has been left carelessly unresolved is carefully resolved. I want you to know that this has become the reality of my life, and I am deeply unhappy with it, and in the midst of this agonising disempowerment I am still able to attain clarity about it and to articulate it even while it silences me in multiple ways. I have lost so much, and it seems like I lose even more with each day and week that passes. Will I die still waiting for every resolution promised? 

I cannot do this anymore.

 

I cannot do this again.

It has cost me too much. 

I have nothing left. 

When will this end?

When will this end? When will the day arrive when, instead of the constancy of painful unmet promise,  I finally receive that which has been promised? Promised again, and again, and never ever within my grasp, never in my arms. I hurt. I hurt with the wanting, with the effort of reaching, and with the loss of days and weeks and years of my life, always believing I will receive what you told me I would. I hurt. I hurt with the longing, with the aching gap of the unfulfilled. I ache with the pain of the disappointment that is coming, again, as all the other disappointments have, scheduled with military precision in the sorry, undone, unpaid, unrewarded, unrelenting farce of my foolish, generous hope. I have paid and paid again for your lies, and yet I am here, still, waiting, as if there is any agency left for me to do otherwise. I ache with the shape of all that is missing, the absence that I feel with every fibre of my self. I ache with knowing the fullness of this loss, guarded by the silence of your feigned ignorance. This is what you have done. This is what you have done to me, while you parade around in your fulsome, rewarded lives. And you, who promised you would be there for me, you have done this to me more than anyone else, and that too, is a loss that I live every day. So I ask again, when will this end? When will the day arrive when I finally get something? 

 

I ache. 

Interminable

How can this be? How can this be that, after all this time, I am confronted by the same interminable struggle? How can this be the case, when I have done so much, for so many? How is it that this thing is always just out of reach, so that I will be unable to grasp that which should be in reach? Where has the fundamental failure of planning, of implementation occurred? And why has everything cost me so, so much, so many times over, and over and over again? How can this be that I am trapped in this maze of mirrors, where the reflection is that which I have done, that was difficult, tedious, stressful, unpleasant, and yet, here it is again, in front and behind me in an infinite distortion that occupies every possible line of my sight? I don't understand why my effort doesn't merit reward, or even the simple satisfaction of fruition, completion. I don't understand why I have not been paid. I don't understand why $1000 by next week is so incomprehensibly impossible for me to find, to have, to pay, when the assumption made by others is that I should have it to pay, as they do, as surely I must appear to them to be able. So why is there this yawning gap between the way things look, between the unstated assumptions that drive the requirements that are placed upon me, and the hard reality of the grinding imperatives that drive me to be sitting here at 5:00am on an impossible deadline that looks no more assured of success than every other thing that was promised, and not delivered? How can you allow this to be? 

And now

And now, I have climbed out of my bed cave. I have eaten breakfast (albeit in the afternoon), taken my medication, showered, washed my hair, tweezed my eyebrows. I have opened the window, and there are fresh sheets to sleep in when I fall into bed again. Tonight we will eat roasted chicken and vegetables and drink wine, and we will talk about the week to come, and not the week that has been. Life resumes. I will be sad for a while yet - and angry at La Narcisse - but the truth is - this sadness and anger have been with me for a long time. They are not new. This death is simply the continuation of an old repeating loss. I have survived it for all this time, I can survive it some more. 

And now, I have a family who love me, and a home that is safe, and friends that seek me out because I matter to them. That is the life I have built for myself, on a foundation of love and respect. That is my story, the story written by me, not for me. This is where my consolation lies, not out there in a place where my questions will never be fully answered, and where any of the answers will only lead to more, aching questions. In our darkest times, the people who truly care for us do not push us away, they draw us nearer to them. They hold us tight so that we know how utterly precious we are to them. And now, I find myself being held close by the people who love me. 

 

Story

 

Once upon a time, there lived a girl. 

She had a mother. 

Her mother died. 

The end. 

So heavy

so heavy I fell through the earth

I rang her. She hung up on me.

I rang her. It was a special occasion that day, but instead of ringing her in the morning, or at noon, I rang her when I remembered, later in the afternoon on the same day.

She had my contact details

 

My mother died. 

Nobody told us. 

I spoke to her just weeks before she died.
She had my contact details. 

(I rang her. It was the first phone call in several years, after she had verbally abused me and then hung up the phone. After always being the person who rang back to placate her, that was the first time I didn't. I didn't call her back. She never rang me again, ever).

If there ever was any doubt
about just how abusive she was, 
how abusive they were, 
this proves it, finally, for all time. 

Apparently

 

My mother died, last year, and nobody told me. 

On excessiveness

Yes, it might seem that I have a lot of crazy stored up, or maybe not even stored, maybe just spraying copiously in every direction. I certainly can understand why, if you were reading this, that you might form such an impression, based either on this content or its prevailing themes. There is a certain excessiveness to everything I’ve written here, and well there might be. Imagine, for a moment, that you formed an undertaking, in which you agreed to a whole lot of stuff on the understanding that you would be supported in that, and then you weren’t. Imagine that, instead, you were actively excluded, undermined, refused assistance, misdirected, and denied resources and support. And then, imagine that this went on and on, not just for months, but for years. Imagine that this became so entrenched a state of affairs that you realised it wasn’t just an undertaking anymore, it was now the permanent prevailing condition of your entire life. Wouldn’t you, too, feel utterly betrayed? Moreso if the parties to that undertaking were the kinds of persons who are commonly understood to be held to the highest levels of accountability, and yet they have behaved in deviously dishonest concert to fuck you over comprehensively? Yes, I know this is only one telling of an entire marvellously complex story, and that there are very many alternative tellings as well. But this isn’t just a story, is it? This is my actual life, as I must live it, as I have lived it for weeks, months, years. And until this story is confronted by actual evidence that disproves this particular telling, then there is no reason why I should protect the vile deceptions that have been enacted in the arena of my everyday existence. Until there is evidence of real support, of undertakings being met in both the spirit and the law in which they were formulated, then why should I pretend otherwise? Why should I act like an ordinary person whose life follows the established order in which agreements are kept and effort is rewarded? Why should I debase myself further with the mockery of pretense? This retching bitterness permeates every moment of falsehood that I am forced to live through by your multiple and repeated failures to fulfil even the most basic of your responsibilities towards me. And no, I will not pretend otherwise, not even if that means I blog like a crazed, raving banshee foretelling my own doom. Because, if only this is true, it is true: my right to pure expression of my absolute rage at the liberties you have taken against me will be guarded and respected as absolutely sacrosanct, or I am already doomed, and so are you. All of you. Therefore nothing I write here matters, and everything I write here matters more critically than anything else that I do, or have done, day and night, for years. This is not the fragile thread that holds up my universe, but it is the thread that holds up yours. 

If I ever started writing

 

If I ever started writing down what you have done to me, really writing what you have really done, I don't think I would ever stop. It is a very, very long tale, that starts a very, very long time ago. I remember how the power would only ever go out at our house, and a few other houses that were mostly vacant. I remember how that was never important enough for you to really do something about it. I remember how dismissive you were at the time. I remember your name, and your rank, and you wife's name, and the colour of your car parked in your own well-lit driveway, and the breed of your flatulent dog and I even know a bit of the reason why your dog suffered such acrid digestive issues, and this too would comprise part of the very, very long tale that starts a very, very long time ago. I remember how you preened in front of that tall blonde who really was not at all interested in you, and how you skated along the edge of a harassment charge for years, and the only thing that saved you was getting old, so that they shuffled you off to your well paid retirement in a manner that was easy, much too easy for someone who has victimised so many with your rigid, inattentive vanity. I know that it was you who supplied negative commentary about me, so that it held me back at a time when I was ready to proceed, how your irrelevant "behaviour targets" were a manipulative tool you routinely used to keep the very best candidates down while you pushed your own flunkies ahead. I even know that we are distantly related, by marriage of course. I remember all of this. Perhaps you are lucky, then, that I choose, at this time, to not start writing down what you have done to me. Perhaps you are lucky that you slunk away into oblivion when you did, as the after-effects of your victimisation began to finally recede from my own life. Perhaps you are lucky that, thanks to me, your flunkies now know what you did and why that was wrong and why that will never be the end of this story. Perhaps you are lucky that I know this is a very, very long tale, that starts a very, very long time ago and so I will not gouge you, personally, in retribution, and anyway that's not really how I roll. But you should know that I can and do remember, that I can and do see clearly what it is that was done, and how all those other people enabled it and set it in motion. And if I ever started writing it down, really writing it down, with all of the details, I don't think I would ever stop. 

Tis strange to think

 

Tis strange to think, there was a time
When mirth was not an empty name,
When laughter really cheered the heart,
And frequent smiles unbidden came,
And tears of grief would only flow
In sympathy for others' woe;

When speech expressed the inward thought,
And heart to kindred heart was bare,
And Summer days were far too short
For all the pleasures crowded there,
And silence, solitude, and rest, 
Now welcome to the weary breast -

Were all unprized, uncourted then - 
And all the joy one spirit showed,
The other deeply felt again;
And friendship like a river flowed,
Constant and strong its silent course,
For nought withstood its gentle force:

When night, the holy time of peace,
Was dreaded as the parting hour;
When speech and mirth at once must cease,
And Silence must resume her power;
Though ever free from pains and woes,
She only brought us calm repose;

And when the blessed dawn again
Brought daylight to the blushing skies,
We woke, and not reluctant then,
To joyless labour did we rise;
But full of hope, and glad and gay,
We welcomed the returning day. 

Past Days ~ Anne Brontë

(untitled)

 

This winding road

This pending load

This shining sky

This dawdling lie

This winding road

This skilling load

This shying sky

This dandling lie

This winding way

This hard-won day

This short-lived stay

This distant fray 

This winding road

This pending lode

This sounding sky

This dangling sigh 

Existential scream

This is too hard. 

It has gone on for too long. 

I have nothing to show for it. 

Sometimes

Sometimes, the amount of distress we have exceeds the size 

of the container we have to keep it in. 

Around about now

 

Around about now, I meet with you, in a pleasant social setting. 

I miss you terribly. You know that. 

I meet you, and I look you in the eyes, and you know the depth of my feeling. 

Then, I throw your ring at you, and walk out. 

This is what happens... except that you never actually bought me a ring, did you, you exploitative lying pieces of shit. 

I could be getting ahead of myself here...

I could be getting ahead of myself here, but there is a certain sort of comfort in knowing that my readership is so... sparse. Gone are the days when I pointed my blog at all the traffic-getting places, and now it's just mostly me in here, shouting (or mumbling) into the digital void, with the occasional attention of a few people I know. On the one hand, it frees up my writerly urge-to-purge, and on the other, it provides an ongoing reminder of my existential insignificance. In the grand scheme of things, this is nothing but a line of squiggly shapes on a virtual page that disappears when no-one is looking at it. And, no-one is looking at it for the vast, vast majority of the time. I do not flatter myself that there will ever be any permanence attached to any of my work, least of all this. (My work, apparently, does not warrant payment and as such I have not been paid for well over two years, and this too is a fact that reinforces my personal claim to inconsequentiality in all aspects of life, especially those in which the fruits of my labours find their measure). My digital product has faded, just as I, too, have faded from the field of vision of those who might, in fairer times, have granted me the benefit of their attention. No matter. I may be tormented by the interminable injustice of it, but I won't be extinguished by it. It is apt, then, that I continue to be represented, fleetingly, by these fragmentary dots of light and un-light, in a moment of connection that will end as soon as you click away from the page, and yet persists in a dark, forgotten un-space, until next it is seen. 

There has got to be a better way to do this

There has got to be a better way to do this ...[whatever]. I mean, if it's not bad enough that I've done it once and forgotten how to do it, I now need to do it again, which requires a whole new bout of remembering. Everything, it seems, demands some fresh hell of mental tasking, casting about for the gauzy remainders of whatever it was I knew the last time I managed to get the damn thing done. One might imagine that the act of repetition would reshape those elusive, but necessary, mundanities into a firmer cognitive agility, but even my most confident attempts are thwarted. It does seem as if the most simple tasks are made difficult, Always, by the simplest things: a login, apparently expired. A password, apparently forgotten. A field on a page, inexplicably not functioning. A stupifying wait for an unhelpful call-centre operator. A thing, misplaced. It might pass as disorganisation or personal ineffectiveness to unkind observers, or those who are not acquainted with my intellectual capabilities. Those who know me know otherwise. It is not insurmountable, but it is tiresome, and tiring. 

(Just between you and me, I suspect a handicap, rather than a disability). 

Unsaid

How do I say that which remains unsaid? 

How do I give even the tiniest part of it breath, a voice? 

How do I climb out from under the weight of forgotten years? 

How do I distill this most precious into words? 

When day comes, we ask ourselves...

                     ... where can we find light, in this never-ending shade?

                    Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true: 
                    That even as we grieved, we grew.
                    That even as we hurt, we hoped.
                    That even as we tired, we tried. 

The hill we climb ~ Amanda Gorman